inconsequential ruminations

My friend James played a lot of Space Hulk as a teenager. He was so excited about the new 3rd edition that he bought two copies – at £60 each. Yesterday James, Rob, Chris and I played a round-robin of three games on both sets on one big table.

Space Hulk is basically the game of the movie Aliens, with a Warhammer 40K veneer. It was first published in 1989, just as I dropped out of gaming. Looking back on it now, I would have loved it.

The components of this new edition are superb. Games Workshop have delivered the sort of quality you would normally only expect from Fantasy Flight. The Space Marines and Genestealers are beautifully sculpted plastic models and even units of the same type are modelled differently. They look stunning if painted properly.

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The board is modular and changes to fit different scenarios. The boards take up a fair amount of room, but we were still able to play two games in parallel.

The rules are pretty simple. Games Workshop have short-sightedly not made the third edition rules available online, but you can read the first edition rules and the main differences between the editions. (You can also get scans of third edition rules if you ask around…)

Main points:

• The Space Marine has to finish their move before a three minute sand timer runs out. This injects a lot of tension.
• Each unit has a number of action points. Space Marines have four. Genestealers have six. The Space Marine gets one to six extra action points each turn to spread among critical units. The Space Marines can use these extra points during the Genestealer turn, so the Genestealers can never exactly predict their turn.
• Space Marines are good at long range; Genestealers are good in hand to claw combat.
• Two to six new Genestealers spawn every round and travel towards their target in hidden “blips” until they get into the line of sight of a Space Marine, when they are exposed.
• The scenario conditions give the Space Marines a goal to complete before they are overrun.

If you have played Dungeon Twister or HeroClix, you’ll find the core movement mechanics very familiar.

There is a lot to like about Space Hulk:

• Tension from the timed objectives and sand timer.
• Beautiful components and well realised theme.
• Simple, well-tested, clever rules. Very few ambiguities or WTF moments.
• Fast playing. Each game took 60-90 minutes.
• Lots of variety from the scenarios. I’m sure there will be lots of fan created scenarios.

Problems:

• The scenarios are solvable. James knows the game well and is a very clever guy. I played the Genestealers against his Space Marines in a scenario he had played before. He steamrollered me, but I’m not sure that anyone else could have done better in my position. This is a problem with any scenario based game. I suppose the solution is to not play any scenario more than a few times.
• The game is more fun as the Space Marines. The time limit is fun and there are more decisions. The Genestealers just have to judge where to build up and when to time their rush. You can get around this by playing a scenario twice, playing each side once.
• Unbalanced scenarios – this isn’t a problem for me, but it might be if you want to play the game a little more seriously. Again, you can bypass this by playing a scenarios both ways.

These problems don’t distract from an excellent game. If you don’t mind a sci-fi horror theme and like simple, dynamic games you should pick this up. It’s the best of its kind.

7/10, but only because I prefer to spend my time on more complex, historical wargames or more simple, multiplayer €urogames. Space Hulk is the best of its genre.

I went to the Isleworth Gamers last night, a new club based in a lovely pub by the river Thames. They are getting organised with a Geek Guild and a blog. They meet every Wednesday at 7.30pm. They are a very relaxed, welcoming bunch and if you are in West London, you should go along.

Last night I taught my favourite game, Age of Steam, to three first-time players. We played the Southern England map, which is little too spacious for four, but it’s simple and it’s always nice playing a game on a local map.

The Age of Steam FAQ is useful. Considering I have played the game so many times, I made two bad rules mistakes:

• I played that only the first player pays full auction price, in fact the first two players pay full price.
• I let someone ship a cube back to its starting city.

Steerpike wrote an amusing post about teaching games to newbies the other day. I bore this in mind and kept the stabilising wheels on. There were no bankruptcies and three of us were in with a chance going into the last round. They seemed to enjoy it, although there were the usual reservations about how the game is so unforgiving and heavy. They all wanted to play it again, so maybe next week.

I was on holiday last week with my in-laws. I tried Mhing as it looked accessible and simple. We played with six, which was a mistake as it slowed the game down.

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Mhing was designed in 1985 and is basically streamlined Mahjong played with cards. In turn, you draw a card and discard a card, until one person gets four melds (sets) of three and one pair and wins the hand. Melds can be three of a kind or a run of three in the same suit. You can use another’s discard, so long as you use it to play a meld to the table immediately. Only the winner of the hand scores. You get points for the combinations of cards in your hand and these combinations are unintuitive and confusingly stated.

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I have a few problems with Mhing:

1. Scoring is too complex for first-time casual players.
2. The game relies on competency. If everyone is content to score their hands as soon as possible, they score very few points and the game crawls.
3. It’s too easy to keep scoring terrible hands and still do better than those trying to make good hands. My mother-in-law was barely paying attention but kept on scoring poor hands and almost won.

In the words of my step-father-in-law:

You could leave this game in an old peoples’ home and they could play it endlessly and love it.

I can see the appeal of Mhing, but I will never play it when there are so many other more elegant, modern card games available. At least it saved me the expense of buying a Mahjong set.
4/10

I played Union Pacific, with four players, for the first time yesterday. Interesting. I didn’t see too many game play similarities with Ticket to Ride. It’s usually compared to Get the Goods, which shares the dividend cards and the stock building element, although Union Pacific has a couple more layers.

Balancing track building with competing for shares was fun, although the track building element had usability problems, as the track cards are hard to distinguish. We played using my new poker chip set, assembled according to JC Lawrences’s recommendations. Incidentally, there’s a good offer right now at Gamble.co.uk for a carousel of 200 decent quality poker chips for £15.

I definitely want to try Union Pacific again soon. It’s very solid, but I wonder if newer stock games like Chicago Express have improved upon it?

8/10

We played Amun-Re and Die Dolmengötter last night. A new games group has opened up in Isleworth, about 10 minutes drive from my house, and I’m very optimistic about it. It should mean consistently getting 4/5 players, so I should have more to write about at least.

Amun-Re was OK. I won, which was nice, but I’ll never love it. I don’t mind abstract games, see below, but Amun Re is too ponderous for my taste.

I also finally got to play Die Dolmengötter. Mikko Saari’s rave review convinced me to buy it and I’m glad I did. If you like the crowded manouvering of Hey! That’s My Fish and want something more elaborate, you should try this. We played with four and we finished about 45 minutes including rules explanation. 20-30 minutes or under is realistic from the second play onwards.

The components and gameplay also remind me a little of Nuggets – another obscure, but excellent game.

Die Dolmengötter deserves a wider audience. Maybe the tacked-on theme and no English-language release reduced its impact.

8/10 but should climb with repeated play.

Peter came over and destroyed me at Napoleon’s Triumph. It’s very difficult to grasp how to play well. I read the rules, but they didn’t help much when playing. Peter understood the basics, so cleaned up.

As many have said, Napoleon’s Triumph is a game that reinvents the wargame. Imagine Nightmare Stratego and maybe you’ll have an idea. I suspect I will not like it in the long run, as I like to relax while playing games, but I was very wrong about Age of Steam on my first play, so it will get another chance.

Before I play Peter again, I’m going to try to find the time to play the solitaire scenario with Vassal.

We played three player Small World at Chris’s place last night. It went down well.

Small World is basically claustrophobic Risk. The main developments on Risk are:

• fixed ten turn duration
• getting VPs at the end of every turn for holding regions
• diceless combat (mostly)
• lots of special powers
• your armies get no reinforcements. Once the kingdom expands to its limit, you have to put your army into decline and start a new one with different powers

Small World’s designer released a game called Vinci back in 1999 that was the foundation for Small World. I played Vinci a few years ago and remember it as having drab graphics and a confusing rulebook. Those two criticisms certainly don’t apply to Small World.

The map is very colourful and the tiles and counters are very attractive. Some argue that they are less usable than Vinci, but I found them OK. To be fair, the counters might be hard to track in a six-player game.

I didn’t read the rules, but full player aids are included and I quickly grasped everything I needed to know. I have played quite a bit of Risk at Conquer Club recently and that helped me get back into the swing of things.

Other improvements over Vinci are shorter play time and a better executed fantasy theme.

Some argue that Small World is Vinci for Dummies, but if you take it for what it is, a light multiplayer romp, it’s great.

This is Bruno Faidutti’s game of the year and I can see why.

7/10, but could climb.

P.S. I wrote this post using Pyroom. Certainly helped me keep focussed.